Weight of a Year
by moonswirl
Summary: Gleekathon, day six hundred and fourteen: Santana and Brittany know what Quinn needs to start moving on: a hair cut.


_Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 29th cycle. Now cycle 30!_

* * *

><p><strong>Hear that little bird twitter!<strong> _Been thinking about doing this for a couple days, then this morning decided to just go for it. If you go there, find 'gleekathon' and there I'll be. There's also a video explaining everything... Yep... ;) Check it out!_

* * *

><p><strong>"Weight of a Year"<br>Quinn, + Santana & Brittany **

They could still see it all on her face as they ushered her out of the hotel and on to the New York streets. They had convinced Quinn that a haircut would turn her day around, and they weren't going to back out on their word. They could tell she could be very close to just turning on her heel and returning to cry in the room all of them girls shared up there, so now the matter was to hurry and find their salon. It became clear after a while that it wasn't Brittany who was guiding them along, and it sure wasn't Quinn, either. And even though none of them had any idea where they were going, Santana was leading the charge. She kept an arm hooked to Quinn's, and so did Brittany on the other side.

"Where exactly are you taking me?" Quinn ended up asking.

"I'll let you know when we get there," Santana spoke, barely paying attention as she scanned the store fronts while they walked.

"You don't have to go out of your way, I mean…"

"Look, Quinn, we're in New York City right now. You've had a crap year, now I'm getting you a decent salon, not some girl who thinks she's all cool because she got out of beauty school about five minutes ago," Santana insisted, and looking back to Quinn, she saw a smile wedge itself out. It had been a while since the two of them had seen eye to eye on anything, though she could understand. The very nature of who they were and who they were trying to be in that school could only pit them against one another. But they had been friends, deep down, and now they were starting to come back up for air.

"So long as you remember I only have so much money," Quinn still had to point out.

"You just let me worry about that," was all Santana would say on the matter, and five minutes later they were walking through the doors of the salon. The three girls stopped in their tracks the moment their eyes began to sweep the room. "Whatever you do, no one mention the word 'Ohio,'" Santana told the other two, breaking the silence. This also got them noticed by a couple of the stylists, who looked up to see them standing there. "You just hang here for a second, let me handle this," Santana pointed them to the chairs before walking up to the girl at the counter. Brittany took Quinn to sit, took one magazine for herself and handed another to Quinn.

"Thanks," Quinn told her and, though she knew Brittany probably thought she meant for the magazine, she didn't go further to add 'for doing this.' It would have seemed like she was in some emotional limbo. She wasn't better yet, but she didn't feel as bad as she did less than an hour ago. Now it was just a matter of getting her fully into the 'better' part before the other one dragged her back in misery.

"It'll only be about ten minutes," Santana announced as she returned to them.

"How'd you do that?" Quinn frowned, curious, but got no response. Santana just sat at Brittany's side and took another one of the magazines. Again, Quinn didn't prolong anything that didn't need to be, not with everything swirling in her mind.

Still when they called her name, she startled, unsure of how to respond. Brittany took the magazine out of her hands, while Santana pulled her up to her feet and freed her of her coat before nudging her in the waiting stylist's direction.

As soon as the whole process, of her hair being washed, then to another chair for them to start working on the cut, the styling, everything, Quinn felt like she was present physically, but mentally… This moment was about renewal, about trying to pull herself from that dark pit she'd lived in for so long now it seemed. She had to focus on that, on the reasons why she needed this, deserved this, on who she had been but more importantly on who she wanted to be.

Did she want to be that girl? The one who not that long ago was ready to throw all her friends under a bus because of what she had been through? She didn't, she so didn't, but she had found herself there, and on the surface it would have seemed obvious how it happened. She'd spent one year trying to hold on to the pieces of her life as her body had expanded to house a baby girl, and just when she thought she was finally going to make sense of everything, her world took another turn.

Everyone around her seemed to have settled on the idea that she was being the same old Quinn she'd been before this mess started, when she returned for the new year. But already something else was happening to her, and they had no idea. Not one of them had a clue, and maybe she didn't either, not in any way that would have lead her to being able to put it into words, but she felt it. She kept it hidden, maybe out of her personal misunderstanding of herself, or maybe because she feared they would just write her off as a broken record, a goner, irreparable.

And so this new year had started, and Quinn played the part… of Quinn Fabray. The cheerleader, the popular girl, with the handsome, popular, jock boyfriend, again… It wasn't like she was out for being predictable, but there was comfort in something familiar, something close to what she'd had… and lost… She'd never meant to repeat the mistakes on top of the successes. But she had; she'd messed it up again, with Sam… maybe not as royally as she'd screwed it up with Finn, but…

Oh, Finn… She'd gotten him back, and now it felt, really, like she could regain everything, like she could forget, move on… But then she knew this, and… she'd panicked. She had been so afraid to lose him again that she had ended up doing every last thing… to make sure he would wake away from her again. Everything she'd tried, it had just backfired on her, and she had ended up lonelier than ever. She had lost Finn, twice; lost Puck, for reasons she couldn't recall; lost Sam, for reasons she recalled too well… Lost her daughter, for reasons she tried to tell herself were just bad circumstance…

She hated the silence. Sometimes she'd just have to crank up the radio, just to convince herself that her life hadn't become what it had… but it did… She tried not to let her mother see her cry. They had both been through so much together, and apart, and it felt like it wouldn't have been fair to her, because she knew somehow she would blame it on herself, for having walked out on her when she did.

But she cried… cried so much sometimes her eyes had no more to give and she'd drift off to sleep, waking later to find herself still completely exhausted. And then she would get up, make herself back up, and go out there refusing to see the cracks in her own soul, in hopes no one else would see them.

She knew she had her reasons for what she'd tried to do to the Glee Club… what they were, well that was another story, but even as she sat in that salon chair, they looked so far away. Her hair was still wrapped up in a towel, and all she could see in the mirror was her own face… her face… the one Lucy Quinn Fabray had wanted so much that she'd been willing to fade away, to make space for her… It hadn't gone without some sacrifices, some adjustments, and it had been difficult but she'd done it because… she wanted to be happy, and she wasn't, and it looked like the only way.

But then she had gotten her new face, fresh start, new life, and what had she done with it? She started to wonder just what it was worth, to try to hold on to something she'd lost so long ago, someone… As hard as it was to admit, she was starting to understand she didn't want that anymore, didn't want to be that girl. For all they'd done for her, in her time of need the previous year, she hadn't done so good in return… And now they had just one more year… She'd made a bad show of it this year, but she knew when all would be said and done that she would miss them, miss this time, this one bubble where everything could be as close to fine as they could be, all things considered. Did she really want to spend it making everyone's time, including her own, so miserable?

This was what she would do. She would compete in Nationals, with all of them, she would go back to Lima, and… She would be happy… or she'd try to, at least. She would unshackle the dark cloud hanging overhead, and take in some sun, soak it all up. And she'd try to be better, in every sense of the word. She didn't know how that would present itself, and she imagined maybe some people would be apprehensive about trusting it, but she needed this change, absolutely needed it to survive. She did care for all of them, whether she'd shown it or not, and now they'd know…

"And there you go," the voice of the stylist brought her back to the salon, and she realized she'd had her eyes closed all this time… What if she opened them and the image in the mirror wasn't the one of the girl she had been building up in her mind, what if…

"Open your eyes, Fabray," Santana's voice materialized at her ear.

"You look so different, I almost didn't recognize you," Brittany's voice was on the other side. Quinn took a breath, and she opened her eyes… She was smiling even before she could tell herself to do it.

"There she is," Santana gave her arm a tap, and Quinn laughed. "Welcome back."

THE END

* * *

><p><strong>AN: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.  
><strong>**In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are  
><strong>******always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!******


End file.
